Governments (both states and federal), or in some cases businesses on their own accord, require that tasks performed by lines of business or individual employees are monitored for risk management, compliance, or regulatory reporting, to name a few. In some cases, the government monitors the audit procedures of businesses and requires businesses to submit reports of the results of the businesses' audits. For example, the government may ask a business to prove that the supervisors within the business are reviewing employees, systems, or processes that they are required to review for regulatory compliance. In other cases, the businesses in general or lines of business within the businesses, may develop and implement their own compliance procedures to review employees, systems, or processes in order to, for example, reduce risk in business processes that deal with large sums of money, or as a way to provide checks and balances for the responsibilities of employees.
In some cases audit systems are set up electronically to monitor actions taken by employees, systems, or processes within various applications that are running within the business. The audit systems, in particular, allow for the supervision of the electronic communication flowing through the network, such as e-mail, instant message (“IM”), financial program messaging, etc. Typical audit systems of electronic communications in businesses simply provide a time stamp as to when a particular message was opened by a supervisor, which does not provide relevant information for determining if the supervisor reviewed the message and performed his/her audit responsibilities properly. Therefore, there is a need to develop apparatuses and methods that help businesses to provide improved audit monitoring systems.